Monthly Archives: August 2016

Daiei continues the slow, lumbering turtle March into the realm of ever-improved sequels with Gamera’s third outing, the fun, yet two-thirds insane Gamera Vs Gyaos. At this stage in the game, Daiei had indeed succeeded in steadily improving their product and tightening the quality gap that separated their Brand X monsters from the “designer jeans” beasts of Toho’s Godzilla-Verse, but they’re also starting to out themselves as being batshit wacky in the process. I don’t really regard that as being a problem, but it’s for sure worth discussing.

THE PLOT~ Tension is high. The residents of a rural, Japanese mountain village have blocked the construction of a proposed super-highway that would lead right through the heart of the pristine forest they call home. The construction can’t continue until these people all agree to sell, so the big muckymucks back in the city tell their head foreman to really put the pressure on these guys to force a deal, but nobody is budging. We come to learn that this is because a respected elder in the village has organized this standoff deliberately, not because these people want to stay in their village, but because they all see this as an opportunity to get super rich, and they believe that the longer they hold out, the more crazy yen they stand to receive from the increasingly desperate land developers. It’s funny how sometimes life can throw you curveballs… One day, you’re leading your friends and neighbors in a crusade to get rich quick, and the next, your Grandson is riding through the sky on the back of a giant turtle, and a three hundred foot tall vampire monster is barking death rays at fighter jets in your back yard. You just never know how life is going to play out, so it’s important to keep your shit straight while you can, I guess.
Anyway, that’s what happens, a volcanic eruption (that old chestnut) opens an ancient cavern in the side of the mountain, from whence Gyaos emerges, a huge, weirdly plane shaped bat type monster who eats humans and causes crazy damage. Luckily, by this point Gamera has apparently totally reformed and is now our big, green homie, so things sort of work out for the best in the end.

The film’s moral is all about greed- as in, don’t be greedy, dude, but it also views the natural world as a cut and dry commodity and states that the deliberate burning of old growth timber is an issue only because that wood is worth money, so Gamera Vs Gyaos isn’t really going to teach you too many lessons you actually want to learn. It’s mostly just fun because it’s full of big, stupid looking monsters who really fuck each other up.

It’s pretty good, though. If you’re into these films, this one is going to give you what you want and expect from the Gamera series, and in greater quantities than the prior two films (Although I did dig Barugon.) The budget also looks stepped up again, but the single biggest change you’ll feel with Gamera Vs Gyaos is how vivid the color pallete is. This movie is very artistic and playful with the colors used, the art department appears to have been tasked with producing props and set dressing which would jazz up the film’s visuals considerably, and they absolutely have; Gamera’s old rival Godzilla wouldn’t be featured in a film which got this ambitious with color until Godzilla Vs Megalon, and even then, the colors that movie used were more basic primaries and much less inventive or stylish. Honestly, there are frames of this film that look like a fucking Wes Anderson movie, and that’s a kaiju first.

If Steve Zissou were piloting that, who would be surprised?

The topic I most feel needs to be addressed, however, is Gyaos; how weird he is, how everything about this whole series now seems very weird in retrospect, and how Daiei must be run by complete and utter madmen. Let’s sit down and talk about this.

So, it’s now painfully, glaringly obvious that Daiei fills their movies up with really, really weird monsters. I feel like I should have noticed this before. They seem to just invent new, bizarre, and totally unrelated abilities for their kaiju on a whim, and the results are really, really strange. Barugon was weird, I’m realizing. He had purple blood. He sprayed frosty gas out of a long tongue, blasted murder rainbows out of his back, and he dissolved in water… Gamera just straight up eats fire- that’s like a treat to him! Now, Gyaos pops in, and he’s plenty weird, too. Gyaos spits powerful death rays, drinks human blood, can regrow severed limbs like it’s no big thang, and sprays yellow powder out of his nipples, which extinguish flames instantly- yet he cannot rotate his head left or right, and is alergic to sunlight. Oh, yeah, and the reason he can’t turn his head is because he has two throats. Yeah, so Gyaos is a garbled Chimera of a creature worthy of Dr. Seues’ darkest nightmares, is pretty much what I’m getting at, and the same nonchalant insanity that created him rears it’s head over and over again throughout this film. At one point, the Japanese Powers-That-Be honestly think that the best plan they have for killing the Gyaos is by getting it really, really dizzy. They set up a fountain that dispenses artificial human blood on a rotating platform, crank up the juice, and prey like hell that he fucking dies somehow. It doesn’t work, of course, probably because that plan sounds like it was conceived by a nine year old, but they try, and we watch them do it. Of course, when they come up with an idea that actually does work, and it literally IS conceived by a nine year old, so I guess whatever. The point is that this movie is pretty much bonkers, and after seeing it, you start to realize just exactly how wacky this whole Gamera thing has been from day one. I now feel somehow uneasy about the time I have spent with Gamera… Like the sensation one must feel when they’ve just dropped off a hitchhiker with whom they’ve enjoyed a long chat, only to then turn on the radio and hear a news bulletin about a dangerous, escaped mental patient matching the hitchhikers description…

I guess maybe there were a few warning signs…

Anyway… Moving on.

As I mentioned before, this movie also further establishes Gamera as a friendly guardian to all mankind, so it comes across as more kid friendly than it’s predecessors, but there’s actually sort of a lot of monster blood in this. None of it is red, though, which seems to mater. Gamera’s blood is green and Gyaos’ is purple, so maybe that didn’t seem like actual gore in the eyes of our distant ancestors, but there’s no buts about it, these monsters are gounging and tearing at each other pretty agressivley. Honestly, that’s not gonna hurt a kid, they need to be exposed to this sort of thing sooner or later. Let your kids watch turtles getting death ray blasted at home, or some other kid is just going to show them at school, and there it’ll be out of context.

Anyway. This is another good one, and so far, these movies are getting better and better,

Remember the foreign exchange program from high school? What a great idea, right? Your school sends off it’s best and brightest to be immersed in a foreign culture for a full year, and in exchange, that country would send some exotic baddass from their ranks to come hang out in your boring town for a while, and everyone would be super psyched about it. Usually. Sometimes it didn’t really work out so well. Sometimes, you’d send off the third hottest cheerleader you had, and in return, you’d get some attic dwelling troglodyte who wrote Lego-land fan fiction. I can almost hear Belgium laughing their, deep, guttural, Flemish guffaws, even now. They’ve made a fool of you… You just know they could not wait to drop that kid like a burning sack of garbage the first chance they got.

That’s sort of how I feel about The Thrill of a Kill. At first glance, this promises to be Norway’s answer to Violent Shit, and damn, is that ever overdue. But then you dig in, give it a watch, and you quickly find out that that isn’t what you have here at all. Somehow, Violent Shit is like…. BETTER. Very much so. The Thrill of a Killis a very specific kind of disappointment. It’s the motion picture equivalent of the foreign exchange student that your principal tried to send back.

THE PLOT~ Kimsy is whatever passes for “Goth” in Norway, which somehow is even lamer than the Domesticated American Goth. She’s a snotty, miserable little shit who mopes around the house all day, wretched and unemployable, and I’m assuming is really into Japanese cartoons. Feels like a safe assumption. Anyway, this is your main character. Aren’t you just elated? It’s unfortunate for Kimsy that her mother is about as big a fan of her as you and I are.

As seen here.

Basically, mom’s had it up to her Nordic nostrils with Kimsy’s bullshit. “Why can’t you get a job like your equally gothy, yet somehow less worthless older sister?” Mom yells. “Fuck this,” thinks Kimsy, no longer able to tolerate her mother’s reasonable exasperation with her lifestyle choices. In a fit of rage both childish and boring, Kimsy, simple minded and angry at the world, grabs her nerd headphones, cranks up her unlistenable jams, and trudges out into the picturesque Norwegian forest to blow off some steam. We all know, however, that no steam is to be blown off today. No, rather, Kimsy is about to bumble into a situation which will do little to alleviate her stress level, for it is here, deep in the wilderness (I guess) that Kimsy falls into a deadly game of cat and whatever Norwegian cats eat with our film’s exciting movie murderer; Just Some Dude.

As seen here.

Yep, our killer is truly nothing to write home about, folks. He’s just some pudgy, Norwegian dork who basically looks like the assistant manager of your local geek squad. He’s the kind of guy who, at the age of 42, likely has nothing whatsoever in his 401K, but who probably owns three replica swords from the Highlander movie series. This is perhaps the film’s most confusing shortcoming, it gives us a protagonist we can’t stand, and an antagonist we won’t even remember. Not off to an ideal start, Norway. Really expected better.

Anyhow. We spend sort of a long time learning the ins and outs of this loser’s back story, which is far from thrilling, but at least they’re trying. Turns out, our weird, murderous loser was the son of a single mother, who basically abused and neglected the shit out of him throughout his entire childhood, because she really wanted to focus on her career (prostitution.) Over time, this unhealthy environment transformed what might have been a perfectly adequate D&D dungeon master into a ACTUAL dungeon master, and our bad guy eventually learns to embrace a lifestyle of murder and misanthropy, as so many of us do… So I guess it goes without saying that Norwegian CPS really screwed the pooch on this one.

Anyway… Our pig nosed, weasel bearded, woman-butchering forest nerd stalks and menaces Kimsy for a while, until he decides that it’s time to kick things up a notch and drag her back to his freak ass Norwegian murder shack for the most uncomfortable scene in the movie. It get’s rough, and you’re gonna hate it.

So that happens for a while, but apparently Kimsy can only be missing for several hours without the rest of her family taking notice. “Hey, where’s that annoying creature we don’t love very much?” Her mom and sister begin to wonder, eventually realizing that there could be legal consequences to letting Kimsy be eaten by trolls once the sun goes down. The two conclude that they had best set out to find her and bring her back home, and we’re into act 2. For whatever reason, this phase of the movie starts off looking sort of promising. We sort of get the impression that Kimsy’s mom and sister are going to embark on some detective quest to track their missing family member down, and perhaps unearth more information in the process that could further flesh out the film and make things more interesting; but if there is one thing The Thrill of A Killloves to do, it is to fall puzzlingly, frustratingly short on promised potential that should be relatively effortless to deliver upon. Kimsy’s mom and sister talk to a whopping one person on their quest, which provides them with no leads and no clues of any sort whatsoever, and then, they just bump into Kimsy at a gas station. Really. They stop for gas and see the murderer there, and as he drives away, they spot Kimsy tied up in the back of his car. Then they just follow him home. That’s it. Pretty easy.

What happens next is dumb, too. Basically, in an effort to rescue Kimsy (I know, what for, right?) a bunch of people die, Kimsy escapes and is recaptured more than once, and a penis get’s severed somewhere in all the commotion. You know what, whatever Norway. I don’t even care anymore. This is not a good movie.

if you wanna talk shop, The Thrill of a Kill is fraught with blatant inferiority in every aspect of its execution, and it never tires of finding ways to disappoint, even when expectations are astoundingly low to begin with. The music is garbage, the photography is boring, and the narrative only holds together because it’s so fucking cookie cutter that it would require creativity to screw up.

And let’s talk about this killer again. Really?!? This is what you’re prepared to offer? I know you’ve got better than this, Norway. You can’t scare up one ghost viking, or maybe some black metal kids or something? How in the fuck is it even possible that to date, Norway, a culture with such a rich history of brutality and violence, can’t do better than the office IT guy? Are you trying to piss me off on purpose?

In summation, The Thrill Of A Killis a truly flimsy imitation of a specific type of splatter film, which are typically known to be very low quality, but are embraced regardless. However, this film’s inability to live up to these astoundingly modest requirements makes it very, very difficult to recommend to anyone. Basically, you would have to have already re-watched all the movies that The Thrill Of A Kill wants to be so many times that you’re sick to death of them, and are desperate for something, ANYTHING new. If you’re in that boat, then A) I kind of don’t understand what a day in your life must be like, and B) I guess I have a recommendation for you. it sucks ass, have fun. For everyone else, I really can’t imagine why you’d want to waste your time.

Gamera’s big debut was a little rough. It was enjoyable, yes, but in today’s world, Gamera The Giant Monster just isn’t a movie that anyone needs to see unless they’re already way into kaiju cinema. It fell a little flat, and for the most part, looked more at home amongst American B-movies of the 1960’s than alongside the higher quality Japanese monster movies it wanted to imitate. All that shit is over now, though, because Gamera Vs Barugon is the huge, lumbering bumble forward in quality we want it to be. This freakin’ movie is absolutely worthy competition for Toho, and in fact, it leaves some of their lesser “name brand” Kaiju in the dust. (Suck it, Varan!)

THE PLOT- After an adventure to smuggle a priceless Opal out of the jungles of New Guinea backfires, Barugon, who is in no way a rip off of Toho monsters Anguirus or Baragon (he totally is) is unleashed on Japan, and he’s eager to hit them with a blast of irrational, crazed lizard fury the likes of which they’ve not known for several weeks. And he might have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling Gamera, who is back on Earth after our efforts to kill/launch him into space proved to be a failure. The two big bad beasties slug it out, in keeping with tradition, and in the end, it’s giant reptile VS giant reptile in a heated, knock down, drag out lizard war for the ages. Why don’t people just move away from Japan at this point? No excuse is a good enough reason to stay put with this crap going on.

The first thing you need to know about Gamera Vs Barugon is that Gamera is barely even in it. Actually, that’s the movie’s greatest flaw, no where near enough screen time for the headlining act; our gluttonous tortoise beast shows up, is prompty frozen solid by Barugon’s icey gas spray (quit laughing), and then he’s out of the picture for 90% of the runtime. It’s just Japan versus Barugon until the eleventh hour, when a freshly thawed Gamera whirls into frame to beat Barugon’s ass, and then the credits roll. This is not an ideal situation given that this is Gamera’s sophomore outing, but since the burden of carrying this picture is all on Barugon, we should probably talk about him a little bit.

Firstly, I want to address the elephant in the room; This dopey ass lizard creature is undeniably a straight up rip off. The whole “BARAGON/BARUGON” thing is, for sure, pretty dammed hard to dispute.

This is BarUgon (Daiei).

And this is BarAgon (Toho).

BarAgon, who, as you can see, looks quite a lot like our boy BarUgon, made his debut appearance in Toho’s Frankenstein Conquers the World one year prior to the release of this film, so trying to argue that there wasn’t any sort of plagiarism here would be a lot like when Vanilla Ice tried to say he didn’t rip off Under Pressure. That argument would just be embarrassing, and Daiei would be better off just admitting to the theft and taking their lumps. The weird thing is, however, that aside from the name, Barugon actually has more in common with Anguirus, than he does with Baragon. Check out the facts; Anguirus is, yet again, another four legged, gigantic lizard monster who had a horn on his Schnozz and spikes on his back. In addition, Anguirus and Barugon both first appear in the second installment of their respective franchises (Barugon here in Gamera Vs Barugon and Anguirus in Godzilla Raids Again, Toho’s second Godzilla film), and both films feature dramatic monster battles that take place in Osaka, Japan, right outside the famous Osaka Castle. I even think Barugon looks a bit more like Anguirus, right down to a mutual lack of floppy ears. Have a look:

They could be brothers.

In summation, yeah, Barugon is a damn rip off.

All that being said, I hated this freakin’ guy before I even started watching this movie. How could I not, given that he was little more than a shameful xerox of Baragon, who had long since warmed my heart with his floppy ears and hilarious antics. I knew from photographs I had seen that Barugon didn’t even have ears, so he was indeed on my shit list right out of the gate; but imagine my surprise when he won me over more or less immediately! Barugon is actually a really well done monster, the suit looks like garbage, of course, but Daiei managed to squeeze more personality into him than Toho did with either of Anguirus or Baragon in their respective debut films. This big, scaly dofus does some really great stuff that I’ve never seen a giant monster do before; firstly, he’s the only Kaiju I’ve ever seen sit down in the middle of a decimated city and take a nap. Barugon totally does that. After smashing up Osaka, he thinks “That was good. This place is mine now. Think I’ll take a snooze.” Awesome. Then, when Gamera shows up, our boy Barry hunkers down behinds some trees with just his eyes poking up, as if to get a feel for the situation before figuring out how he wants to react to the appearance of this potential foe. The decision he reaches is that it’s time to throw down, and so after a brief confrontation, Barugon blasts Gamera with his ice spray and freezes him solid, at which point he prods Gamera’s big, frozen head with his horn, as if to make sure his opponent is really down for the count. These are all small things, but they make an amazing difference in selling this ludicrous looking puppet as a living creature, and I came out of this fairly impressed by the attention Daiei put into the subtleties of Barugon’s personality. That, more than anything else, excuses his plagiarized monster lineage, and so B-Boy get’s a pass from me, ultimately.

There are also other ways in which Gamera Vs Barugonsucceeds where many films in this sub-genre continue to fail. The best thing the movie does is that it gives us interesting human characters and a story which would still be fun, even if it didn’t have a single giant monster in it. That’s huge. The bungled Opal smuggling sequence is great, it’s fun and exciting, and combines elements of gangster cinema and jungle adventure films, which is an odd mix, but which pays off in spades. Our two most important humans in the picture are, Onodera, who is a ridiculously over the top douche bag and also our villain, and Keisuke, who is our protagonist. This whole “Retrieve a giant opal” thing is clearly a shady, under the table type of operation, and actually I’m not sure why that is. It seems like you should be legally allowed to be a treasure hunter and bring a rad ass opal back from the jungle if you want to, but we get the message that this was evidently a very illegal thing that they are doing, and that actually works to the films advantage in a very clear and tangible way. Keisuke inherits a sort of ambiguous morality through his association with these shady dealings, and that makes him a more interesting character than we’re used to seeing in this films. It also gives us Onodera, who again, he’s a fucker. Let’s talk about him.

Onodera has a rap sheet longer than Barugon’s retractable lizard tongue. It’s freaking crazy how much of a dick head this guy is. Firstly, he allows one of his gem heist conspirators to suffer a fatal scorpion sting, so as to ensure that Onodera receives a bigger cut of the take. Then, when his Keisuke fails to die from natural Jungle related risks, Onodera grenades the cave shut in an attempt to rub him out, too. The final conspirator is Keisuke’s disabled brother, who hid the opal in that scorpion infested cave during the war in the first place. Onodera pays a visit to this disabled war veteran and kicks the hell out of him and his wife, before leaving them both trapped in a house directly in the path of Barugon’s incoming stomp fest. They both die. The real coup de gras comes later, though, at the end of Act II. At that point, every single attempt to lay the smack down upon Barugon had been an abject failure, and things look grim. A new plan is formulated, which, at this point, looks to be literally the only chance mankind has at defeating Barugon and saving Japan. This last ditch plan involves the use of a giant, fantastically valuable diamond, which must be loaded into a cool light projector thing, and used to lure Barugon into the water, which he is allergic to, if I didn’t mention that before. “Diamond, you say?!” Says Onodera, who immediately jumps into action, zooms up alongside the vessel carrying a small number of brave men literally in the process of attempting to save the world, only to open fire on them and steal this diamond, which, one final time I want to stress this; is, as far as anyone knows, the only thing that can save the entire human race. Where does he think he’s going to spend the money when the entire planet is destroyed?! Also I want to remind you that Barugon only exists because Onodera is a douche bag in the first place. It takes an extreme, flamboyant kind of shit head to rob people who are actively working to save the world from a cataclysm that was your own doing to begin with, but Onodera is that flamboyant shit head, and they really don’t get any shittier. It’s impressive.

If we’re talking about what’s wrong with Gamera Vs Barugon, again I would call out it’s shocking lack of Gamera to be it’s most damaging fault. For most of the picture, he’s frozen, face down, in Osaka. If he’s not frozen, he’s either on screen fighting Barugon (this happens twice, the first time leading up to his freezing, and the second time resulting in Barugon’s demise,) or he’s off attacking Hydroelectric dams and other such installations so that he can gobble up all the delicious energy they produce in order to satiate his gluttonous Turtle hunger, and that’s almost all off camera. Anyway you slice it, Gam-Gams needs more screen time, and Daei should have known that.

But that is the worst thing about this movie. It certainly looks lower budget than Toho’s pictures, but that’s pretty much not a problem. As I’ve said in my review of Gamera’s first movie, his frumpy inadequacies are more endearing than anything else, since the very act of watching a Gamera movie is tantamount to rooting for the underdog anyhow. In no small way I would say that Gamera Vs Barugon is a classic of 1960’s Kaiju that doesn’t need to feel all that inferior to what Godzilla was up to at that time.

Here is a complete list of everything good in the 2016 super hero film Suicide Squad:

Ike Barinholtz

That’s it!

Suicide Squad is a badly directed, cliche ridden piece of dreck that has so much going on, it’s never allowed to savor a single moment unless it’s also facilitating the hell out of some clumsy exposition. It’s an economy class super hero picture, there just isn’t enough time to get everything done that this film needs to do, so in true DC/Warner Bros style, it rushes its balls off, and because the powers-that-be are also inclined to pepper this rat turd with as much sugar as they can to try and compensate for its terrible blandness, they drench the fucker with liberal doses of pop music in an effort to trick you into thinking you’re having a good time- because who doesn’t like Bohemian Rhapsody? The end result is, in no uncertain terms, a montage. A badly made, two hour music montage, smeared with fan service, and Margot Robbie’s butt, and it fucking sucks. One really gets the impression that David Ayer might make a mean mix CD, but he really shouldn’t be directing motion pictures.

Or writing, them, while we’re on the topic- in addition to being in far too much of a hurry, this thing is badly plotted and embarrassingly derivative. The dialogue is just start to finish cringe worthy, rivaling B-movies of the 1950’s in how ham fisted and stilted it is. And even worse, because Suicide Squad is so uncomfortably compressed, basically every awkward line is 100% necessary to advance the plot. There’s no garnish, this is all load-bearing structure style dialogue, and if they cut one more line the damn pictures caves in and the plot become lost- and what a plot it is! This is pretty much just a rehashing of Escape From New York, The Dirty Dozen, and Ghostbusters, but with shitty third string DC characters nobody cares about. In summary; horrible movie, good soundtrack, fan service, Margot Robbie’s butt. What a shitshow.

And it’s just sad. How is it that DC/Warner Bros just CANNOT figure this out? They have every advantage- a hungry, desperate and unfailingly forgiving fanbase that would happily bend over backwards to enjoy one of these pictures if only they could, two full length motions pictures worth of trial and error, complete with detailed feedback from fans and critics alike to help them hammer this fucker into shape, and the invaluable work done by rival studio Marvel, which not only gave them years worth of examples on how to do this the right way (although clearly nobody at DC/Warner were taking notes), but also already did the heavy lifting in training a global audience on how to understand and accept something as radical as a shared, expansive, multi-franchise cinematic universe for comic book superheroes, and that’s actually huge. Basically, all the hard work has already been done by the competition, and DC/Warner Bros have been given a product that millions of people are ravenous for. Yet still, here we are, having this same old conversation. DC! WARNER! You can’t squeak out ONE passable 90 minute movie? These people are FAST running out of excuses. DC/Warner Bros are basically the kid in T-Ball that is just NEVER gonna hit that ball, no matter how many free swings you give him. These people are hopeless, and it’s not even fun ripping on them anymore.

One more dig before I go- WOW. Cara Delevingne is a truly HORRIBLE actress. Like, way bad. I laughed inadvertently more than once at her, and she is NEVER supposed to be funny in this film. I felt bad when it happened, but it just flew out. Who gave her this part?! How does this happen?

But you know what- since I’m such a sweetheart, I’ll admit that Captain Boomerang and Diablo actually had their moments. They weren’t as good as Ike Barinholtz, but they weren’t bad.

The Joker, though… Yeah. Everyone wants this to be some revelation because this character has such a rich lineage of big screen (and small screen) performances, but it’s just not in the cards this time around. This is, no question, the worst live action attempt at portraying the character yet. It’s uninspired and lame. Dude, psychopaths don’t tattoo “damaged” on their foreheads, Juggalos do. I’d call this pandering, except that in order to pander, you have to be dumbing down your product to meet the demand of a clientele which is less intelligent than you are. In this instance,I think it’s the other way around.